by Daromir Rudnyckyj

Abstract

In February, 2009 issue of Cultural Anthropology, Daromir Rudnyckyj analyzes the convergence of religion and capitalism in a moderate Islamic spiritual reform movement active in Indonesia’s public and private enterprises and government institutions. Rudnyckyj explores the ways in which spiritual reform projects bring together Islamic ethics and management principles to create a more disciplined and less corrupt company employee. These spiritual reforms have inculcated an ethic of individual self-policing based in Islamic practice to enhance company productivity, eliminate corruption, prepare employees for privatization of this state-owned enterprise and increase Indonesia’s transnational competitiveness.

Complementing Jean and John Comaroff's notion of "occult economies" and building on James Scott's notion of "moral economy," Rudnyckyj utilizes the concept of "spiritual economy" to shed light on the convergence of religious resurgence and neoliberal transformation. In Indonesia, religion is not a "refuge" from or resistance to neoliberalism, nor is it a retreat into "magic and mystery" in response to global capitalism. Instead, religion and capitalism are brought together to address the challenges of globalization. By enabling Islamic virtues of self-discipline, accountability and entrepreneurial action, one becomes both a more pious Muslim and a more productive employee. Rudnyckyj argues that "managers, state technocrats, and religious reformers sought to enact a set of neoliberal practices by creating a new type of subject, a worshipping worker, for whom labor was a matter of religious duty." Spiritual economies articulate how these practices were deployed "to remake the country's political economy and to elicit a type of subjectivity commensurable with neoliberal norms of transparency, productivity, and rationalization for purposes of profit."

About the Author

Daromir Rudnyckyj is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia Canada. His book, Managing Hearts, Developing Faith (under contract), examines contemporary projects of "spiritual reform" that take economic development as religious and ethical problems. His current research concerns modernity, religion, globalization, development, and the state in Southeast Asia. He is planning future research on anti-corruption in Indonesia and Islamic finance in Southeast Asia.

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Related Links

ESQ training is one of many spiritual reform programs that establish connections between work, worship and individual ethical transformation. Below is a list of other programs in Indonesia, in other Muslim countries and elsewhere.

Additional Works by the Author

Worshipping Work: Producing Commodity Producers in Contemporary Indonesiaand Taking Southeast Asia to Market: The Production of Nature, People and Places as Commodities in a Neoliberal Age, eds. J. Nevins and N. Peluso. 2008, Cornell University Press.

"Market Islam in Indonesia." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2009 Vol.15(s1) Special Issue on "Muslim Politics"